Qld Housing Minister Blasts Mayor Over Homeless

The drive to provide homes for homeless families and singles has run into a bad case of NIMBYism:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25557619-3102,00.html

Homeless Families in the News Again

Just to prove this blog isn’t a storm in a tea cup, Here are a couple of links with quotes from Australia aid agencies about the growing problem of homeless families:

Struggle to Shelter Homeless Families

Sydney Families Forced Onto Streets

Some of the comments leave one gasping – the utter lack of care or understanding in some people beggars belief, do they really think it can’t happen to them? This is the real epidemic from which no one is safe, not the Swine Flu.

Earth Day

It’s Earth Day today, and time to talk about sustainable living, and planning houses and communities for the future that do not drain the earth’s resources.

What has this to do with Helping Homeless Families? Quite a lot. Smaller, more sustainable communities planned around conservation principles such as solar power, water tanks and vegetable gardens is nothing new, and such communities are being built in Australia. But they are still out of the reach of many. We now need to look at the future of public and low cost housing, and plan to build communties for low income families based on these principles.

A positive step toward a more sustainable future would be installing water tanks and solar power in public housing, and in making it mandatory for all new public housing to have these features. Cash rebates work only for those who have the cash to start with. If the government truly believes this is the way forward, then it first duty is to ensure the houses it builds and maintains are sustainable.

This would help low income families in many ways, by lowering their living costs and encouraging them to be more conservative in their use of resources. It would ease the burden on the existing electricity and water supplies. Sydney has had two major black outs this year, and in the country area were we live, you can guarantee a blackout every time there’s a storm.

While public housing shortage exists, homeless families will still suffer, but the building of small, sustainable communities will help alleviate that, and the power and water crisises we so often face. The Australian government is giving away money as cash incentives, but what better incentive can there be than to put money into building low cost affordable and public housing for Australian families? It generates employment and gives hope to hundreds of thousands of families that their future, and the future of this country, will see housing relief for all.

At Last – Someone Noticed…

This report from the Sydney Daily Telegraph finally brings the problem out into the open:

“IT’S the ugly truth of the economic downturn almost too heartbreaking to think about.

Entire families living in cars parked in suburban shopping centres.

Kids doing their homework in the back seat, not knowing what to tell their friends when they want to come over to play on their trampoline after school.

Parents getting ready for job interviews in public toilets.

Never in a million years did they think they would be in this position. All it took was one breadwinner to lose their job…”

Read the full article here.